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Remember Seattle's CHAZ/CHOP? After the place was cleared, a bunch of local businesses and property owners sued the city and now they all reached a settlement. One part that definitely didn't help Seattle were tens of thousands of deleted text messages:
[...]
The city didn't ignore notifications, officials did.
Don't sanction the city, sanction the people. The city didn't delete texts, people did. Throw those people in jail, fine them until they are destitute, and make an example that misconduct is punished personally.
I completely agree, but Qualified immunity would like to have a word with you. If cops can steal $225k during the execution of a search warrant with no repercussions, what makes you think anything anything would happen here?
Explain to me why Chauvin wasn't protected by Qualified Immunity, then. Or the cops in Memphis.
Your example does little to influence me other than to raise the level of contempt I have for judges and courts. That seems blatantly against the Fourth Amendment, but what good are parchment rights in treacherous hands?
Treacherous indeed. I was going to blame Burger, but he was the only one dissenting.
Qualified immunity only covers civil trials (mostly in the context of S 1983 and Bivens torts), not criminal charges. The problem for criminal charges and cases like Jessop is more that there's no chance of the state wanting to bring a theft charge against its own employees, even where, as in Jessop, one employee had already plead guilty for a different crime committed on the job, just one that the government cared about because it interfered with a drug trial.
((And along with the special Fuck Kim Davis clause, "don't harm marginally-resisting arrestees, even on 'accident'" is one of the few things judges sometimes consider "well-established law", though sometimes not.))
You can look up the current King County prosecutor (Leesa Manion) and Washington State attorney general (Bob Ferguson), but I don't think you'd need to make too many guesses about their political alignments.
I was born and raised in the state. I'm familiar with Ferguson. He's likely to run for Governor when Inslee decides to move on (please, soon). Manion doesn't ring any bells, but King County is blue as the deep sea. The KC Exec is going on fifteen years in office, and the KC Council are dominated by Dems year in, year out.
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